SAN FERNANDO DE APURE JOURNAL; Health Inspectors Take Note: Rodents Can Be a Delicacy

By SIMON ROMERO

Published: March 21, 2007

As dusk fell on the tropical wetland crawling with iguanas and small crocodilian caimans, Jos?smael Jim?z pointed his harpoon at a rodent about the size of a Labrador retriever. With aim that comes from years of practice, he landed his spear on the back of its head.

But this hunt was not about ridding the country's southern plains of varmints. It was about what's for dinner.

The hunter's only goal was the meat of the capybara, reputed to be the world's largest rodent. Unlike other South American countries, including Argentina and Brazil, where capybaras are raised mainly for their hides, here the rodent's meat is a sought-after delicacy, fetching prices almost double those for beef.

''This job is harder than cattle,'' Mr. Jim?z said while on a nighttime hunt on Hato Santa Luisa, a ranch spread over more than 40,000 acres on Venezuela's plains. ''But it's just as rewarding.''

Mr. Jim?z, a wiry llanero, as the plainsman cowboys of this part of Venezuela are known, and seven other hunters armed with .22-caliber rifles and steel pipes, killed 18 capybaras during their foray.

The annual hunt comes before Easter, when capybara has a status in Venezuela similar to that of turkey during Thanksgiving. While the Roman Catholic Church generally forbids eating meat during certain days of Lent, many Venezuelans insist that the capybara is more akin to fish than to meat.

That may have something to do with how salted capybara tastes, resembling a mixture of sardines and pork. Legend has it that eating capybara, known here as chig? (pronounced chee-GWEE-reh), got a boost in the 18th century when the local clergy asked the Vatican to give capybara the status of fish.

Scientists' assertions that capybara is neither fish nor fowl has not dented its popularity in Venezuela. In fact, the meat is so coveted throughout the year that poachers nearly wiped out the country's capybara population, until the authorities limited hunting of the wild rodent to controlled amounts on private land.

''We're conditioned poorly in the United States to think of rodents as rats in sewers and such things,'' said Rexford D. Lord, a capybara expert at Indiana University of Pennsylvania whose book, ''Mammals of South America,'' which profiles the capybara, was published this year by the Johns Hopkins University Press.

''Actually capybara meat is delicious,'' Mr. Lord said in a telephone interview. ''It's more like rabbit than chicken, though when dried with sea salt in Venezuela it acquires a fishy flavor.''

Capybara aficionados include President Hugo Ch?z, who grew up in Barinas, a state on Venezuela's steamy plains where capybaras are common. On his television show, ''Hello, President,'' Mr. Ch?z has promoted capybara empanadas washed down with papaya juice.

Eating rodents is not unheard of elsewhere. In Louisiana the nutria, which resembles a small capybara -- but with a tail -- finds its way onto dinner plates. Or witness the relish with which diners in Ecuador and Peru savor cuy, or guinea pig. In Caracas chefs have tried elevating capybara to haute cuisine.

Never mind that capybaras have some unusual habits like eating their own feces. And yes, some chefs acknowledge, the methods used to kill capybaras, normally involving a sharp clubbing of the rodent's head, put off some diners.

''We're not asking for the capybaras to be put to death while listening to Vivaldi, but something could be done to make the practice less brutal,'' said V?or Moreno, the head chef at the Center for Gastronomic Studies, a Caracas cooking school. ''Capybara is an exquisite meat that deserves prominent stature in our culinary tradition.''

It remains more popular in Venezuela's rural interior than in the capital. Though found from Panama to Argentina, biologists estimate that no more than a few hundred thousand of the animals survive in Venezuela. Most of the capybaras are on large private cattle ranches, where fences and armed guards have curbed illicit hunting.

''The capybara is easier to steal than a cow, so there's still a bit of thievery that takes place on some ranches,'' said Reynaldo Alvarado, 46, the foreman in charge of the capybara hunt at Hato Santa Luisa. Still, he said, some male capybaras can weigh as much as 140 pounds and measure four feet long.

''Those ones are very special,'' Mr. Alvarado said.

Authorities delayed granting licenses for this year's hunt, tightening the time available to 20 days from one month. So the hunt, normally a harried affair, was all the more frenzied this year. Like other ranches, Hato Santa Luisa was allowed to kill 20 percent of its capybara population, or about 1,400 of the rodents.

The ranch pays the hunters, mostly idle ranch hands and recently discharged soldiers, 17,000 bol?rs a day, about $8. Driven to the ranch's swamps around sunset in a cart hauled by a John Deere tractor, the hunters use flashlights to find their prey. They say capybaras are less likely to flee at night. Though the preferred method for hunting them is with a small rifle, sometimes that does not work when capybaras, semiaquatic by nature, escape into murky ponds or creeks.

Hence the steel pipes used to club them, or the harpoon, which requires better aim from a distance. The hunt also poses risks for the hunters: piranhas and small caimans swim in the same waters as the desired rodent. And adult capybaras, while docile when young, are known to bite when threatened.

''The pursuit is very hard,'' said Abel Vargas, 42, a pipe-wielding hunter who wore a pair of goggles for diving after capybaras. Mr. Vargas said he especially liked cooked kidney of capybara.

Are the kidneys a matter of taste? ''No,'' he said. ''Of hunger.''

Photos: On Sunday, José Rangel hung salted capybara meat out to dry. Capybara is known as chigüire in Venezuela, where it is a Holy Week treat.; Farmhands turned hunters, left, stalking the wild capybara, reputedly the world's largest rodent, on Saturday on Hato Santa Luisa. One of them hurled a harpoon at a wounded capybara. The meat is then salted and dried. At right, on Hato El Cedral, another capybara roamed free. (Photographs by David Rochkind/Polaris, for The New York Times)

Map of Venezuela: The wetland in San Fernando de Apure also harbors some reptiles.